Feral
by Chaos Infinity
Summary: The wolf is strong, but the man is stronger. Or Remus hopes so, at least. His morals are sorely tested after joining Fenrir's pack.
1. Prologue

**Prologue - Blow, blow, thy winter wind!**

On any other night, it would not look like this. It would not leer, peering down evilly with its sickly, pale yellow light. But that night, when Remus crouched uncomfortably in an unnamed forest at the outskirts of the werewolf pack, the moon glared at him through hooded eyes, watching the shudders of him and 40-odd others as they went through their change.

For him, the change was torture. Torture, pure and simple, because it depraved him of what he fought so hard to keep at all other times – his mild-mannered ways, his polite demeanor and gentlemanly countenance. Perhaps it was because of the change that he had those little things, the ones which endeared him to those who loved him more than he knew.

For them, the change was release. Release from human bounds, for this was the night in which they could excuse their inhuman ways because that was what they were – inhuman. It was their only chance to bite back – literally – at the blow fate had dealt them. Unable to cast off the curse and too vain to hate themselves, they embraced it.

He hung on to his humanity as deeply as he could. They pushed it away as far as they could. He used all his strength to retain a humane soul; they used theirs to be animals, even when they were not. Sometimes, he would feel the feral urges pressing onto his mind; sometimes, they would feel the slightest twinges of a long-fled conscience.

A wild howl ripped the silence of the forest apart. It was not the eerie, melancholy call of the brown-grey wolf that was Remus. It was the bloodthirsty one, shared by Fenrir with many others, signaling the beginning of the night's hunt. At the exact same moment, many hundreds of miles away, a small and fine-boned witch dropped her mug of tea.

For a moment, Tonks stared at the broken shards of brown porcelain. It was spread across the floor in a hundred different pieces, and each one of the brittle, splintered pieces stared back at her accusingly. "Reparo." The mug reformed itself at her feet, but bleeding red welts from where pieces had pierced her skin still remained. Bending slowly and stiffly, she picked up Remus' favourite mug and placed it carefully on the countertop. Shuffling out of the basement kitchen and up two flights of stairs, she slipped between the sheets of Remus' bed.

The village came into view quickly, Fenrir's pack trotting faithfully behind him in a swarm of brown and grey, muscly shadows moving on crisp snow. The bitter, winter wind carried a soft scent, easily detected by their twitching noses. Breaking ranks, they bounded towards the drifting smell's source, silent except for the crunching of snow underneath their padded feet.

At the edge of a graveyard, under a large beech tree, a Muggle girl-woman waited for her lover, wringing her hands anxiously. She was more than a girl, yet not quite a full woman. That, Fenrir reflected, was the perfect stage of life to feast upon. It was the human side of his split mind which thought this thought, for that was the only side capable of doing so. His wolf, though intelligent, would never think, only feel. And that the human side of his mind thought this did not bode well for anybody.

Beneath the beech tree, the Muggle girl-woman knew only that she heard softly crunching snow and was waiting for her lover to appear. She did not know that the young man pictured in her mind was far, far away in the arms of another girl, and she did not know that the soft crunching noises came from many pairs of feet, not one. But even if she did, it would not have done any good.

For, as the wolves bounded onto the girl-woman from the darkness, she had enough presence of mind for the moment it took to note that they moved with terrifying swiftness. Her last thought was of her family, her last image of the moon, shining serenely and wallowing amongst the stars, as her body was ripped apart by glistening teeth.

So many miles away, Tonks finally drifted off to sleep, dreaming of Remus amongst the ones who were the same as yet so different from him. The red welts on her legs were still there, staining the bed sheets a rusty red. Outside, bitter winds ripped into the bricks of No. 12, Grimmauld Place and a brown-grey wolf's fur, as he howled his sorrow up to the heavens.


	2. Secrets in the Snow

**A/N:** Sorry this is a bit of a short chapter. But the idea of the chapter sort of ends here, so I stopped. The next one will be fairly long.

**Sky Spade:** Have done. Hope you like this one too.

**Dolphinz87:** Thanks for you numerous compliments!

**TrinityDD:** Thank you very much :) I feel all warm and fuzzy..

**Bitter Reunions:** heh. Yeah, this will be one of those very lengthy stories with 10+ chapters.

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Secrets in the Snow

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Hungry.

Hunger was one of those most basic needs, which all creatures strove to satisfy as best as they could. And all the wolves, but one, were hungry. Prowling at the edge of the pack, a brown-grey wolf dug his muzzle into the snow, trying in vain to numb the itching in his teeth as Fenrir deftly picked out the best parts of the human they had just killed for himself. The huge rangy wolf dug his jaws into the chest, then the navel, each time his muzzle becoming more crimson.

When Fenrir was finally done, the other wolves swarmed over the corpse, nudging and sliding against each other in their own quest for food. Pushed along with the tide, the brown-grey wolf was soon within feet of the body. But even three strides away, the body was blocked by so many others that he could not see it. Padding silently, he saw an opening amidst the fur, and pushed himself forward.

Lying there, in the snow, was food quickly being decimated. In but a few moments, it would be completely gone, with only red stains on the snow to show that anything had ever been there. Eager to take his fill as well, the wolf that was Remus pushed forward until he, too, was close enough to dip his muzzle down and take what was left to take.

There wasn't much left to take any more – undoubtedly, Fenrir had already left with the wolves not feeding to hunt down another human. But Remus-wolf was here, he was standing at the upper half of the human corpse. Not much was left except the shoulder, which had been untouched. Not pleasant, but still food. Food. His human mind, weakened by the hunger and blinded by the wolf's lust for flesh, cowered, not seeing, not believing.

It wasn't until his cold-numbed nose nudged the still-soft flesh of the shoulder that the human eyes shuddered open. While the wolf saw food, the human could see what used to be human. And in imagination's eye, the headless body gained a head – a pink haired head he hadn't seen for too long. The pink haired, fine-boned witch was being ravaged by the werewolves.

Later, Remus was never sure of how long he spent watching, horrified at the sight his imagination gave him, even more so at how much the foreign part of his own mind struggled to join them. The only thing he knew for sure was that when the first glimmers of dawn appeared, the only record of what had passed was the one seared into his memory. When the werewolves shuddered back into their naked, human forms, the harsh snow freezing them to the ground was joined by a violent, opaque white wind.

Staggering upwards, lest he be caught in a frozen tomb, Remus sought for his tattered clothing. His skin was raw, but the accumulated filth of months had been removed (albeit painfully). The process he went through every month took most of his physical energy away, but when he at last leaned against an evergreen's trunk, sheltering under a branch, the vividness of memory did not fade.

Nymphadora. It hadn't been Nymphadora, yet it had been. Every single month, every corpse he witnessed was Nymphadora. And, as always, they had been eating her. Eating Nymphadora. Relishing Nymphadora. Ripping strips of flesh off savagely, throats turned upwards as they swallowed lustily. Jealous of the human who controlled their dual minds, the wolf wished that he, too, could have tasted her.

No longer having the strength to even support himself against the tree, Remus fell forward onto his knees, bracing elbow for the fall. A few short groans later, the ground was covered in what little that had been inside his stomach before. Shaking with cold and fear, he crawled backwards, out of the shelter of the tree and back into the storm. As he tried to stand again, the branch which had been sheltering him before bowed under the weight of the snow.

All traces of what had happened, once again, buried in snow. All records of what had transpired, once more, kept only in the mind of one man. An impatient call cut through the whishing sounds of blowing snow, and once again, Fenrir's pack returned to him. Bedraggled, weak, pitifully clothed in rags and shambles, the men who had witnessed and committed murder not twelve hours before assembled proudly in front of their strong leader.

* * *

For residents of the Muggle village, two people going missing from their already small number was another blow. It was accepted that the hunter, Vladimir, had probably been caught outside when the snowstorm struck, and that the same had probably transpired for little Elsie who thought that she was so grown up. Vladimir left behind a pregnant wife, Elsie an elderly father. Breath by breath, the village became aware that not all would make it through the winter.

The violence of the snowstorm meant that any planned rescue of Vladimir or Elsie was impossible. Besides, who knew where they had gone, anyway? One certain young man thought he knew where Elsie's body would be found, but kept quiet. When a search and rescue finally set out, hours later under light snowfall, the same young man suggested that they head towards the cemetery to see if any of the tombstones had been damaged. In front of cemetery, unmarked, white snow lay in a foot-deep drift innocently. When the others went home, disheartened after a fruitless search, the young man returned to the cemetery.

"Elsie?" His voice was guilty, and as close to shame as it had ever been. Disgruntled, he kicked at the fresh snow in front of the beech tree. Alarmed, he tore pink-stained snow away with gloved fingers. Horrified, he backed away from a few tissue-clad bones. Running into the wood, under the very same tree Remus had been at that morning, he vomited his breakfast and lunch onto the snow.

However, unlike Remus, he didn't back away from the tree. A flurry of flakes flew down with renewed vigour, and the tree branch once again bowed down. He was hit squarely on the forehead and knocked out, his prone body folding under a heavy blanket of snow. It would be three months until two young boys who had wandered into the wood saw his frozen body, exposed under melting snow. That certain young man would not remain a secret.

* * *

With a dressing gown clutched tight around her body, Tonks stepped out from the doorway of No. 12. Casting a last furtive glance around to make sure nobody was around, she disappeared with a muted _crack_. Unknowingly, as she brushed against a metal pole, scarlet drops from her lower legs showered the ground in a spiralling pattern. When she appeared again, those scarlet drops were buried under a bright white layer of snow. 


	3. All a Matter of Will

**A/N:** Long time no update! Sorry, guys. I'll try to have a more predictable writing pattern from now on. Thanks for bearing with me.

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**All a Matter of Will

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As the dilapidated Muggle entrance of St. Mungo's came into view, Tonks made one last attempt. "Really, Molly, I appreciate this but, honestly, I think it's not necessary. I _am_ an Auror, and – " Her dull coloured head drooped down in defeat as the Weasley matriarch cut across her speech: "- still need to be cared for, no matter what you do for a living, dear." Though capable of swelling up like a bullfrog in a way that would scare anybody into submission, her tone was gentle. As much as she knew it was necessary, she didn't want the girl to feel intimidated. Yet.

In the always crowded space before the counter, Molly propelled Tonks forwards in the queue. When they finally reached the reception mediwitch, Molly waved her wand at Tonks' jeans, which promptly rolled upwards into a bunch at her knees. A white bandage soaked through with blood was exposed to view, along with a small huff from the owner of the leg in question.

The calm witch didn't blink before starting to say in her demure voice, "the sign clearly states that for animal bites you should be on floor – " once again, Molly cut in. "_No_, dear, she does _not_ need to be treated for a bite. You see, last night, when Arthur – that's my husband – and I were out visiting some friends and Tonks was at the head-… er… house… alone, she was having some coffee and dropped the mug. But when we got back she was already in bed, in fact, I wouldn't have found out about this except for today being a Sunday, so I was doing the laundry and so when I went to get her sheets I found the stains on –"

A tall, dark-haired healer passed by, and the blonde witch behind the counter quickly flagged him down and interrupted Molly's flow (or rather flood, she thought privately) of words. "Here, Healer Tarkins will take you into a room and hear it in full." The queue of people behind Molly seemed to collectively breathe a sigh of relief as she bustled off with the Healer, Tonks trailing behind with a drooping head. Each strand of half-heartedly spiked hair on her head seemed to wilt with embarrassment.

"Now, let's hear the story from the start, shall we?" Healer Tarkins was middle aged, lean and starting to go grey. In the private consulting room they entered the light was dim, blurring details. The very promiscuous resemblance to Remus was pushed into Tonks' mind for a moment, and she sat, mildly confused by the change of roles. This wasn't right – she was the Auror, he was the werewolf. She was meant to be healing his injuries, not he hers. But no – no. This wasn't Remus. The man's hair was a shade lighter, his eyes not the same warm almost-gold.

"Well," Molly started again, not seeming put off at all by having to start again, "last night Arthur and I were out, and Tonks was having some coffee in the kitchen. She dropped the mug and it broke, which is how she got those cuts on her legs there. Of course, she repaired the mug and put it back, and didn't think about it. After we came back, she'd already gone to bed, so we didn't hear about it. Today being Sunday – that's laundry day – I was going around the rooms to get the bed sheets. When I got to her room, I saw that there was quite a lot of blood on her sheets, and so I went to find her." Molly took one deep breath before continuing again, just as quickly as before.

"But when I got downstairs, Arthur came and told me that we'd run out of food quite completely except for the eggs and bacon we'd had for breakfast, because the night before we'd meant to get some after visiting our friends but it was so late when we left that it quite slipped our minds. So anyhow, Arthur and I went out to go get some, and on the way we met Tonks, and she decided to come with us to get some things as well. Now, after a while, I saw that her jeans just on top of her leg there –" Molly pointed at the bandage – "a stain was starting to come out. And Tonks was so tired, she didn't even seem to notice, poor dearie."

"Obviously, we stopped as soon as we could to have a look at it, and we saw that there were a few scratches and cuts – nothing enormous, quite ordinary ones that shouldn't have kept bleeding. So she told us about how she broke the mug last night, and we were a bit mystified about why it hadn't already healed. We got her a bandage and put it on, and thought that was that. But all of _that_ happened in the morning, and when we went out again in the afternoon I thought to check on her bandage and –" Pointing at the blood soaked bandage, Molly's face was concerned and baffled – "it still hasn't healed. So I brought her here, even though she said not to worry and –"

"I see." The Healer's voice was firm and decisive, and Molly fell silent to hear what he had to say. "It was an… ordinary sort of mug?" He asked Tonks, who looked helplessly at Molly. "It was Remus's… And looks pretty much like any other mug I've ever seen." Nodding knowledgeably, Molly, domestic goddess, rattled off the make, material and probably date of manufacture of the mug. Tonks, thankful that it seemed to mean as little to the Healer as it did to her, looked down to the floor immediately after he caught her eye. He wasn't as handsome, for sure, but when he tilted his head like that, and his eyes looked upwards…

Shaking her head, which was becoming fuzzy and prickly with unwanted thoughts again, Tonks shrugged. "I've never had this before… Every other time I've hurt myself, which is a pretty big number of times – " Here, Molly looked at her with a distinct exasperated fondness, "- it's just healed normally really quickly." The Healer's eyes took in her limp hair, pale face and dejected stance, then rubbed his eyes tiredly.

"It's lucky I'm the one seeing you now, you know, because I know what's wrong and not many Healers do. I have seen a girl like this once before, many years ago." Quickly, the lines on Molly's face changed to avid curiosity. "You see," the Healer continued, "everything in the Wizarding World is a matter of will. You would know this already from spells, and especially apparation – you have to really _want_ to do the magic, to be able to do so. And Healing is a magic too. You have to _want_ to get better. Usually, no matter how badly a person is injured, they will want to get better. When even a simple wound, like this, doesn't heal, it means that… well…"

"Yes?" Healer Tarkins received a full blast of Molly's famous I-don't-need-verisaterum-to-get-truths look. "Well, it means the young lady here doesn't have a… will to live." As he said the last words, a look of slight embarrassment overtook his features. When with patients who only had a slim chance of survival, at least he knew where he stood – no matter how dire the circumstances, the patient still wanted to be alive. But here, unsure of what was happening and unwilling to possibly intrude into private affairs, he was lost and uneasy.

As the two women digested the truth, Tonks without too much surprise, Molly with dawning horror, the Healer shifted uncomfortably in his seat. For the next few moments, something quite remarkable happened. Molly, matriarch of the Weasley clan, mother of six children and an invincible source of power, had absolutely nothing to say. The tiny things wiggling across her brain were only the half-baked beginnings of thoughts, and her face was set into lines of stunned horror as she stared at the Healer, then Tonks. "No… will… to live?" Finally, four words forced their way out of the mouth that usually had a lot more to say.

Nodding and shifting in his seat once more, the Healer ran a hand through his greying hair. "There really is nothing St. Mungo's can do, I'm afraid. Perhaps the two of you ought to… go home… and have a little talk about what's been happening." With furrowed brows, Molly looked at the him while thought processes ran across her brain in erratic patterns. "But… Won't something like a cheering potion help?" After all, never before had magic failed her. "No, I'm afraid not," he replied, "that's only a temporary thing, and the unusual condition we are talking about means there is something fundamentally wrong with life."

Through the conversation, Tonks had sat silent, and the other two had avoided speaking to her. Now she asked a question, but in a disinterested way as if the answer didn't really matter to her. "Could you tell us a bit more about the one other case you said you've seen?" For a moment, the Healer paused. Confidentiality was one of the hospital's codes, but everybody in the story was long dead. Finally, for the sake of shedding a bit more light onto the current scene, he nodded his head and settled back in the chair to tell his story.

"It happened in the first war. In the last few days before the war ended, everything was still going towards a climax, and things here were really bad. Every day, we'd have patients pouring in, and every night we'd had to magically expand the hospital to make room for the next day's new patients. One day, a mother brought in her daughter. She was severely depressed, refusing food and scarcely sleeping. There was a small wound on her forehead, but no matter what we'd do to try and close it, the wound would never quite fully heal and then expand to its original size again after a while. It was as if there was something in her repelling all attempts at healing.

"While depression normally does slow healing, hers was so deep that it was completely stopping it. We asked for her story, and it was a sad one indeed. Her fiancé was a reporter for the Prophet, and one day they risked a day out together picnicking in the woods. They had never heard of anything strange happening in the woods, but unfortunately that was wrong. It was a Death Eater hideout. Half way through, they heard Death Eaters in the woods near them, but even then nothing might have happened had the young man not risked everything and gone after them. He was a reporter after all, and had been in tight situations before, but he didn't understand how much more serious this was.

"Though he told her to stay behind, she would have none of it and followed him. They went up into some trees, hiding there while listening to the Death Eaters discussed their plans. But you can guess what happened – they were heard. To save her, he jumped down and fought them as hard as he could, to buy her time to get away. She did get away, but just as she apparated, she saw them start torturing him. It was one of those as painful to look upon as to feel, and every night she would dream of seeing him with his skin being peeled off his arms, waking with the ring of his screams in her mind. It was this, you see, that made her so depressed. She blamed herself for not being courageous enough to stay with him, to help ease his passage into the next world by going with him. But the latter wish wasn't long in coming – a few days after she came here, she died."

His narrative finished, Healer Tarkins sat leaning forwards in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. It was a sad tale, and this was almost the first time he had told it. Laying his own emotions away, he concentrated on the case before him. That the young woman was suffering the same condition was beyond doubt, but perhaps she would receive a better fate. But no cures without diagnoses, that much was certain. Yet how much would he be justified in prying into what were so obviously private matters? Luckily, the problem was resolved for him.

Molly, who had been slowly absorbing the news and story had just woken up to what it might mean. With eyes and mouth open wide, she turned to Tonks, horror seeping from every pore of her body. "But… but… Tonks… You're only 23! How could this happen?" Then, she rounded on the Healer, the horror turning slightly to indignation. "There must be something wrong here. How can you know it's definitely this? It can't be true. There must be a virus or something stopping the healing." On any other occasion, the demeanour of the Weasley matriarch would have made the Healer smile. However, his face only turned more grave.

"Madam, I know how hard it is for you to accept something like this happening to your daughter." Molly was about to explain who Tonks really was to her, but the Healer's raised hand closed her mouth. "But the symptoms are almost entirely unique, and she does not carry any of the signs that would indicate the Viachen virus or the Utuber Cast. Though there's very little we know about this form of extended depression, especially on how it differs from a normal one, there are some things we can still try. But first of all, we ought to ask your daughter what it is that is troubling her." With a nod of encouragement, Healer Tarkins focused his clear eyes on Tonks. Somehow, those eyes were incredibly similar to Dumbledore's – a light, pleasant blue with a ring of grey. So while she knew Molly would understand the problem from her single word answer, she assumed the Healer, like Dumbledore, would too.

"Remus."


End file.
